New Study Examines Impact of Military Deployment on Families

The
global war on terror may be winding down as U.S. troops pull out of Afghanistan
and Iraq and return home, but suicide rates of U.S. service members reached an
all-time high last year, a symptom of much bigger problems for military
families who experience deployment, according to Candice Alfano, an associate
professor of clinical psychology at the University of Houston (UH).

“During
the global war on terror, deployments have been longer and more frequent than
any other war in U.S. history,” said Alfano. “Some families, some kids, and
some marriages have really suffered.”

Alfano
serves as co-principal investigator for a three-year, $2.7 million dollar grant
funded by the U.S. Department of Defense titled “When Parents Go to War:
Psychosocial Adjustments Among the Families of Deployed Operation Enduring
Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom.” A multisite grant (one grant, multiple
locations) in Florida, Hawaii and Texas, her co-principal investigators are
professors Deborah C. Beidel at the University of Central Florida and Charmaine
Higa-McMillan at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. The primary goal of the project is to examine
how deployment impacts children and families in order to determine the types of
programs and resources that would be most helpful for them.

“Unlike previous research studies, we plan to
do more than have families just complete some questionnaires. In addition to
comprehensive interviews, we’ll be measuring children’s salivary cortisol levels
(a hormone linked to stress) and sleep,” said Alfano, who also serves as
director of the Sleep and Anxiety Center for Kids (SACK) at UH. “Biological measures are highly sensitive to
periods of stress, more so than a questionnaire. Self-reports are also subject
to a range of biases, whereas cortisol and sleep are objective. Children in our
study will wear an actigraph, similar to a wrist watch, which allows us to
measure sleep-wake patterns. We think this is particularly important since sleep
is usually the place where stress first rears its head.”

Across
all three sites, a total of 450 civilian and military families with at least
one child (7 to 17 years of age) are being recruited. There are four types of
families who can participate: military families (any service branch) with a
deployed parent; military families without a currently deployed parent; civilian
families with only one parent at home due to separation or divorce; and civilian
families with both parents or caregivers at home.

Alfano and her collaborators hope that results
from the study will advance current knowledge of how military deployment
affects children and families. One of the biggest limitations of existing research
is that it has failed to include adequate comparison control groups. Children with a deployed parent have either
been examined in isolation or compared exclusively to children from military
families without a deployed parent. “In our study, we are examining two types
of military families as well as two types of civilian families to better
determine how military-related separation, specifically, impact children and
families,” Alfano said.

Participating
families will receive compensation for their time and efforts, which will include
one in-person appointment as well as tracking of children’s sleep and
collection of saliva at home for one week. Families need to have at least one
child between the ages of 7 to 17 years in order to participate.

The
Sleep and Anxiety Center for Kids (SACK) at the University of Houston (UH)
offers free clinical services to children of active-duty, reservist and veteran
service members. Free workshops focused on improving sleep are also offered
periodically for service members. For more information about available research
opportunities and/or clinical services at SACK, please call 713-743-3400 or
visit the SACK website, www.uh.edu/SACK.

About the University of Houston

The University of
Houston is a Carnegie-designated Tier One public research university recognized
by The Princeton Review as one of the nation’s best colleges for undergraduate
education. UH serves the globally competitive Houston and Gulf Coast Region by
providing world-class faculty, experiential learning and strategic industry
partnerships. Located in the nation’s fourth-largest city, UH serves more than
40,700 students in the most ethnically and culturally diverse region in the country.
For more information about UH, visit
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